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Friends of Ingalls remembered him Monday night saying he was a safe pilot and a great friend. "Very upsetting, we were good friends," says pilot George Cole, one of the last people to talk to Ingalls before his plane crashed. "I talked with him, everything was normal."

The Cessna 180 airplane took off from Cole's property in Kensington at around 9 a.m. He says Ingalls has stored his plane there since the 1970s. "He was very safety -minded. He is the last guy I would ever think would crash," Cole says.

George Korn, who has lived next door to Ingalls for 40 years in Kingston says he was an accomplished pilot and had retired from the Trans World Airlines. He says Ingalls still continued to fly on a regular basis.

"I am shocked. I can't think of anyone who would be less likely to be an airplane crash than David," Korn says. " I will personally miss him, seeing him out here in the garden, but I will also miss what he did for the town and others."

Witnesses said the plane was taking off when it appeared to stall and crash into some trees. They said the plane went into an abnormally vertical position then veered left and dropped into a stand of trees.

"It looked like a really nice takeoff, the plane was level and he was getting good altitude," said Bob Lamothe. "And then all of a sudden the plane pitched up and went very severely into the sky and you could see as he was going he was losing altitude."

Onlookers rushed to save the two people trapped inside the plane, but were not able to.

The plane came to the airfield for fuel during an annual event where pilots test their skills. The pilot was apparently not taking part in the event, but just stopped at the airfield for gas. All events were cancelled for the day.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating what caused the crash.